The bliss of the small private spa evening

Dear reader,

Once a month, on a Friday or Saturday evening when my partner is out for the evening, I turn our small apartment into a small private spa for about three hours. The practice has, over the last two years, become one of the small monthly rituals I most look forward to. The cost is approximately the cost of the few small specific products I use, which is minimal. The benefit is the kind of small structured indulgence that, in my younger life, I would have travelled and paid significantly for.

The setup

Several candles in different rooms. The bathroom is set up for a long bath — the bath salts I have written about elsewhere, the warm oil, the small ceramic mug for warm tea, the soft towel on the rail. The bedroom is set up for the post-bath portion — the cushions on the floor, the eye pillow, the blanket, the warm body oil, the small dish of warmed shea butter for the body application.

The kitchen has a small specific dinner prepared in advance — usually a simple vegetable soup with bread, kept warm on a low burner for the small dinner that happens midway through the evening. The phone is off and in a drawer. The laptop is closed and in the office. The television is unplugged. The whole apartment is, for three hours, dedicated entirely to the practice.

The structure of the three hours

The first hour: the long bath. Forty-five minutes in the water, with all the small preparations I have written about. The remaining fifteen minutes of the hour is getting out, drying off, applying the warm shea butter to the body, putting on a soft robe.

The middle hour: the small private dinner. The soup, slowly, in the kitchen, with the small candle on the table and the lights low. A small piece of dark chocolate at the end. A small glass of wine, occasionally.

The last hour: the post-dinner body practice. Twenty minutes of supported bridge with the bolster. Twenty minutes of long savasana with the eye pillow. The remaining twenty minutes is the small re-entry — putting on regular clothes if I am not going directly to bed, tidying up the small spa setup, preparing the bedroom for sleep.

What three hours does

Resets the body and the mind in a way that no shorter practice can reach at home. The three-hour version provides, in concentrated form, what a small bathhouse day provides — a sustained period of complete sensory shift from normal life, in which the body has time to fully drop and the mind has time to follow.

It also, in some way, removes the need to spend significantly more money on equivalent experiences elsewhere. The expensive spa day, which is the closest commercial equivalent, costs perhaps a hundred and fifty euros. The small monthly private spa evening costs perhaps ten euros in consumables and is, in my own experience, almost as restorative. The cumulative annual saving is significant. The cumulative pleasure is comparable.

If you have an evening occasionally when you are alone in the apartment, consider doing this. The setup takes about twenty minutes. The practice takes three hours. The benefit, in my own experience across two years of monthly sessions, is one of the small reliable structures of being well-cared-for in an ordinary life.

Until next month,

M.